Famed designer John Romero tweets a response to the question about whether one of the creators of DOOM and QUAKE has "given up on making a good old school FPS." His answer is unequivocal: "Definitely not! I have plans..." He did, however, quickly debunk kneejerk speculation this might be Daikatana II. Thanks Janic.

Prez wrote on Mar 12, 2012, 00:01:I hear a lot about Romero's supposed genius, but frankly I think he is massively, MASSIVELY overrated. A one-hit wonder at best. I have plans of my own - to not care one whit if Romero ever does another thing in gaming.

He invented the first person shooter genius.

Whatever, smartass. Depending on who you listen to, a half-dozen other guys did too. Did Romero design Maze War in'73?

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Bhruic wrote on Mar 12, 2012, 08:37:id games had the reputation they had not because of amazing gameplay, but because of technological prowess.

I don't know, the gameplay in their titles was unsurpassed at the time. In fact in many ways modern FPS games can't hold a candle to Quake, they're all low FOV affairs that move at a snails pace to accommodate console players.

I do agree that id hasn't really adjusted with the times though and they don't seem to be very in touch with modern gaming. It's a shame because I still think the market is poised well for a fast paced FPS with high production values.

You're using singleplayer story as the indicator of whether an FPS is mediocre, good or spectacular?

No, I'm not. That's why I used the word "example".

Story is one game element that wasn't really present at all, then Valve came along and implemented it well into a game. Nowadays, virtually all FPS make an effort to have a quality story (with varying degrees of success) in a FPS (assuming a single player component). What is that an example of? It's an example of Valve pioneering an aspect of FPSers.

The same is true of id, but they didn't pioneer story, they pioneered FPSers in general. But that doesn't mean that their games were "awesome", it means that with little to no competition, their games stood out from the other games of the time. When Doom came out, what was competing for the FPS market? And then Quake came out, and was a vast improvement on 3d design, when the other games of the time were still using the "fake" 3d that Doom had pioneered - again, allowing it to stand out.

id games had the reputation they had not because of amazing gameplay, but because of technological prowess. Today, they can't leverage that prowess to give them enough of an edge over other games to stand out. So they are having to rely on their other abilities to make a good game. And recent history has demonstrated that their other abilities are lacking compared to other companies.

vrok wrote on Mar 11, 2012, 22:00:The point was obviously that story has little relevance to shooting, the namesake of the genre. It wasn't about singleplayer vs multiplayer.

Singleplayer is just something that id doesn't do very well, at least since Doom 2 (a Romero game), so I brought up the multiplayer. It so happens that multiplayer also makes it easier and far more obvious to judge quality of gameplay mechanics and design in an FPS.

So why not just judge a game on it's graphics? Or sound? Making your criteria more specific because you acknowledge that certain aspects of a title aren't great does not rate the game as a whole, just that aspect.

Doom 1/2/3, Q1,2,4, Rage all had single player components (in most cases the majority of the game was SP). It's nonsensical to ignore all of that and only focus on MP/game mechanics/graphics etc and say "all these games were good".

I don't think his point was "ignore singleplayer in favor of multiplayer"... I think the point was that story is not that important in an FPS, but rather gameplay (in both single and multiplayer) is... In an FPS, much as in porn, story generally only gets in the damn way... Doom 1/2 had almost no story whatsoever, but they were some of the finest singleplayer games I've ever played... Q3A's singleplayer was basically just multiplayer in disguise, with almost no story at all, and is probably the most enjoyable FPS game I've ever played... The point is: story isn't really necessary, but good gameplay definitely is...

Hellbinder wrote on Mar 12, 2012, 03:33:actually romero's quake was 3rd person and it was a fat bearded guy with a huge hammer. the game morphed into a FPS when they realized they couldn't make that game right with the technology they had.. or they ran out of time... or something like that.

but no really.. quake was originally designed as a 3rd person fantasy style game around a guy with a giant hammer. and when he hit the ground it made the screen/ game "quake"...

beigemore wrote on Mar 12, 2012, 04:07:I really don't know what to say other than "what?"

If all you say is "what" to that post then you don't know the history of it.

A preview included with id's very first release, 1990's Commander Keen, advertised a game entitled The Fight for Justice as a follow-up to the Keen trilogy. It would feature a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent", armed with thunderbolts and a "Ring of Regeneration." Conceived as a VGA full-color side-scrolling role-playing video game, The Fight for Justice was never released.

Actually, the original Quake:The Fight for Justice was supposed to be an RPG. We actually started working on it immediately after finishing Keen1-3, but abandoned the project because the technology of the time couldn't help us realize the vision of what Quake was all about.

When we started working on Quake, we started out with many of the same ideas from before, mainly in the character design of Quake: he had a Hellgate Cube sidekick creature, had a massive hammer that dealt incredible damage, was a total badass, etc. But during Quake's dev cycle, everything completely changed and the game ended up being something that was NOT anything like the original Quake character that John Carmack had designed (back in his D&D campaign).

Maybe someday Carmack will finally create the True Quake character in one of his games. Perhaps he should get Graeme to add the True Quake into their next game! Who knows...

Didn't the doom 3 expansion have a cube? I guess carmack did something with that after all.

romero? it's a name that just seems so long ago. It's now 2012 and suddenly his name peeps out? i don't see much coming out of this. And didn't he say he wanted to focus on iPhone games(not that there's anything wrong with that)?

I just don't see a splashy comeback. The years have passed and it's just been too long now.

actually romero's quake was 3rd person and it was a fat bearded guy with a huge hammer. the game morphed into a FPS when they realized they couldn't make that game right with the technology they had.. or they ran out of time... or something like that.

but no really.. quake was originally designed as a 3rd person fantasy style game around a guy with a giant hammer. and when he hit the ground it made the screen/ game "quake"...

Prez wrote on Mar 12, 2012, 00:01:I hear a lot about Romero's supposed genius, but frankly I think he is massively, MASSIVELY overrated. A one-hit wonder at best. I have plans of my own - to not care one whit if Romero ever does another thing in gaming.

Doom 1/2/3, Q1,2,4, Rage all had single player components (in most cases the majority of the game was SP). It's nonsensical to ignore all of that and only focus on MP/game mechanics/graphics etc and say "all these games were good".

I wouldn't call it nonsensical. It depends on what your priorities are. If you focus on multiplayer and don't care about single-player, than you likely thought the Quake games were amazing. If you only cared about single-player, you likely thought they were crap. Almost every game has both single-player and multiplayer these days, but never are the two given the same attention.

vrok wrote on Mar 11, 2012, 22:00:The point was obviously that story has little relevance to shooting, the namesake of the genre. It wasn't about singleplayer vs multiplayer.

Singleplayer is just something that id doesn't do very well, at least since Doom 2 (a Romero game), so I brought up the multiplayer. It so happens that multiplayer also makes it easier and far more obvious to judge quality of gameplay mechanics and design in an FPS.

So why not just judge a game on it's graphics? Or sound? Making your criteria more specific because you acknowledge that certain aspects of a title aren't great does not rate the game as a whole, just that aspect.

Doom 1/2/3, Q1,2,4, Rage all had single player components (in most cases the majority of the game was SP). It's nonsensical to ignore all of that and only focus on MP/game mechanics/graphics etc and say "all these games were good".

Personally, I think the concept behind Daikatana was cool. A magical sword that lets you time travel to different eras, with different visual styles and matching enemies. AI teammates with unique personalities that would help you. A wide variety of weapons to use, from the different eras.The problem was in the implementation.If done correctly, where the game play was something like that of the Jedi FPS made by Raven, with better AI companions, it could have been awesome.Instead, it ended up as a game that looked and played like a Quake II mod gone wrong.Now, if Romero were to do a Daikatana II and get the guys from Raven who worked on their Jedi games involved, that would definitely pique my interest.

I hear a lot about Romero's supposed genius, but frankly I think he is massively, MASSIVELY overrated. A one-hit wonder at best. I have plans of my own - to not care one whit if Romero ever does another thing in gaming.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” - Mahatma Gandhi

vrok wrote on Mar 11, 2012, 20:50:You're using singleplayer story as the indicator of whether an FPS is mediocre, good or spectacular? Or did you just forget that the S in FPS actually stands for shooter?

You can "shooter" AI monsters, or "shooter" other players, in either case its a "shooter."

The point was obviously that story has little relevance to shooting, the namesake of the genre. It wasn't about singleplayer vs multiplayer.

Singleplayer is just something that id doesn't do very well, at least since Doom 2 (a Romero game), so I brought up the multiplayer. It so happens that multiplayer also makes it easier and far more obvious to judge quality of gameplay mechanics and design in an FPS.

And yes, longevity of a shooter is definitely multiplayer reliant. Without good multiplayer, or mods that provide it for you, your shooter will probably die a quick death regardless of how 'AAA-mazing' your singleplayer story is. That however is what excessive marketing is for I guess.